[Foundation-l] Recent firing?

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 5:41 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why would you even ask that question, let alone expect an answer? Last
> I checked, no Wikimedian also carried the title of "majority
> shareholder" or anything close. You're not entitled to sordid details
> of personnel management. Try to remember that the Wikimedia Foundation
> is a business, and needs to operate with more professionalism than
> "announce everything announce often."


On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 5:30 PM, Sebastian Moleski <sebmol at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have to disagree. The reason for the speculation is not the rumor. The
> reason for the speculation is a misguided sense that there's some sort of
> absolute right to know about these things. Jimmy's right: it makes sense
> that board or upper level management positions are discussed among the
> project community (although I would not consider this list to be a useful
> forum of community discussion). It does not, however, make sense that this
> principle be applied to someone responsible for office IT.
>
> I don't know what the reasons were for why this particular employment is
> scheduled to end. And there's no reason that I or anyone other than those
> directly involved with it internally to the foundation should know. It's a
> simple case of none-of-your-business.

Practically every state and municipal government in the US is subject
to public disclosure laws, sometimes part of 'Government in the
sunshine' legislation, which require most relevant information about
the daily operations to be made available.  This usually includes
information on employee performance, reasons for departure/dismissal,
etc. about everyone from top management through the junior
dog-catcher. Though the law usually does exclude highly
private/personal information (for example, medical information).

[I'm coming from a US centric angle here because that is what I know.
Feel free to mentally replace US locations with any other place with
robust records laws]

Accordingly, I find the supposition that being very open about the
operations of the foundation is somehow incompatible with
professionalism or ethical behaviour to be simply unsustainable.

Wikimedia is not a business. It is a publicly supported charity. The
WMF depends on the public both for the funding used to cut everyone's
paychecks and for the creation of the material which makes its sites
worth visiting. In terms of man-hours-input the community of
contributors dwarfs the foundation's full time staff considerably.

The inescapable reality of this is that the employees and officers
serve at the pleasure of the public. Although the chain is not a
direct chain of command, it is no less real.  So I don't think it's
surprising to see people making noises expressing a desire for the
kind of openness which is technically available from state and local
governance almost universally thought the US.


"In enacting this article the Legislature finds and declares that it
is the intent of the law that actions of state agencies be taken
openly and that their deliberation be conducted openly.

The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the
agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not
give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the
people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people
insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the
instruments they have created." Cal. §11120


I believe Wikimedia Foundation already has a stated goal of being on
the leading edge of organizational openness and has done well /by
commercial standards/.    Perhaps it's time to take that a step
further and voluntarily subject the organization to the public record
laws of some state or some composition or subset thereof.

Not only would this advance openness but it may help avoid arguments
over the form and level of openness by delegating those decisions to
others who have thought harder about them than we have. It may also
make cooperating with other organizations simpler because rather than
trying to explain Wikimedia's bizarre one-off openness requirements
and the inevitable debate about the wisdom of every aspect, it could
be simply pointed out that the WMF operates under some particular
rule-set used elsewhere.

Pre-existing government openness rulesets also have the advantage of
the existence of training materials for staff and layman guides for
the public.